Entry doors for residences, business, and industrial facilities often suffer from shortcomings in their design. One popular design is a door formed from wood. Since wood is generally light and can be shaped and cut easily, wooden doors can be manipulated to meet a lot of differing needs and requirements. Wooden doors, however, are often more susceptible to harsh environmental conditions. Still further, wooden doors have a fixed insulative capacity that cannot generally be altered without significant costs and design issues.
Steel or metal doors, on the other hand, provide strength and the ability to withstand extreme environmental conditions. Due to the heavy material, the metal doors generally have a hollow cavity in order to substantially reduce the overall weight. Often this cavity is filled with a wood material, which similarly causes the door to have a fixed insulative capacity that cannot generally be altered without significant costs and design issues. The metal door with the cavity filled with wood can still be heavy and difficult to install.
Traditionally, the metal door was manufactured with two door skins if the top and bottom pieces were manufactured integral to the respective door skins or four pieces if the top and bottom pieces were not integral to one of the door skins. One traditional method of manufacturing the door is to weld the pieces together at the seams. The welded door provides great resistance to the harsh environment and can generally withstand fires, but suffers from being a time consuming and costly procedure as well as being unattractive.
The welded door is unattractive due to the welded seams that contain a variety of bumps and ridges from the welding process. Further, the welding process is generally unreliable and may cause material flexing and fitment issues due to the extreme heat required to weld the door together. Further still, the welded door is costly to produce because an acceptable door must be prepped for welding and then welded. Not only is welding expensive and time consuming, the unattractive seams that result must be sanded and polished to provide an acceptable finish. The sanding and polishing procedures are objectionable because they are both labor intensive and messy.
Further still, these types of entry doors are limited in the available points of contact between the door and applicable building structure. This may create additional gaps through which environmental conditions may enter, e.g., hot or cold air. The door may then not offer suitable insulation to the opening, which may increase heating and cooling costs.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved door that may be formed from skins and that can be manufactured in a more efficient and cost effective manner and that may be easier to install due to a lower weight. Further, there is a need for a door that may exhibit good protection from environmental conditions and that can provide additional insulative capacity. Further still, there is a need for an entry door that may be formed to contact additional components of the building structure to which it is attached to provide a better seal between the building structure and environment.